Flour spattered her apron, her cheeks, the hairs on her arms up to her elbows. The cold marble slab beneath her kneading hands knocked against her hip bones as she coerced the dough into thin discs. Copper pots dangled from their hooks against the white subway tiles on the wall. Everything was white that wasn't a tool. Cabinets and counter tops, drawer pulls and knobs, the tiles on the floor. Everything was clean and everything was sterile. And what wasn't white was brass, copper, or stainless steel.
Even her hair shined like copper in the rays which filtered through the skylight above her, the sun white, the light white. The buckle on her white apron brass, the bakery shelves stainless encased by clean glass. Crisp towels rested on metal hooks and waited for her dark hands to brush off the white powder.
To her the bakery was all she needed and the yearnings for a life filled with adventure only pricked at her serene and placid mind but rarely. Though convinced the chapel of her kitchen was all she ever needed, the truth, which blinded her even rarer still, was that she was afraid if ever she was to travel she might never want to come home. A spell of melancholy loneliness would overtake her steadfast loyalty to the bakery and her heart would ache for every soul she would never meet. Her legs charged with energy craving movement from the quicksand of white tiles. She would pack her bags to run away and then, instead, content herself with baking the confections of the world from the safety of her tiny shop on a hometown main street.
